This week’s roundup is headlined by a rare stop on Corruption Junction’s environment and worker safety line. Ending a week-long parade of sentencings in U.S. District Court, Phillipsburg-based Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Co. (a division of McWane, Inc. of Alabama) on Friday was sentenced to pay a fine of $8 million for its convictions for committing flagrant abuses of environmental and worker safety laws as well as obstructing investigations of its conduct.

The company’s on probation for four years and will be watched by a federal monitor over that time. Just shy of three years ago, after a seven-month trial, the company and some of its officials were convicted in an eight-year conspiracy to to violate federal air and water safety laws by regularly discharging oil and other pollutants into the Delaware River, rigging air emission tests to mask over pollution and concealing worker injuries from inspectors at a workplace dangerous enough to contribute to multiple injuries and one death. Four former Atlantic States managers were sentenced to federal prison terms over the course of the week — 70 months for former plant manager John Prisque; 41 months for former human resources manager Scott Faubert; 30 months for former maintenance superintendent Jeffrey Maury; and six months for former Atlantic States finishing department head Craig Davidson.

State and federal prosecutors also advanced a few other corruption-related matters this past week; details below the jump.

Wednesday: A former Motor Vehicles Commission clerk is indicted by a state grand jury for allegedly selling hundreds of fraudulent motor vehicle titles to various brokers and purchasers[2], including 13 people also charged this day in separate indictments. Wesley Starr, 35, of Trenton, the former Motor Vehicle Commission clerk, was charged with 20 counts, including some second-degree charges of official misconduct and bribery that could get him 10 years in prison. In 2006 and 2007, Starr allegedly circumvented the regular titling procedures — 378 times — using a special procedure by which public agencies obtain an application for certificate of ownership for abandoned vehicles that will be sold at public auction.

Wednesday: A husband and wife were sentenced for failing to pay the state more than $50,000 in sales taxes [3]that they collected from customers of their auto towing and repair business in Sicklerville, B & J Towing and Service. James Hendricks, 52, of Sickerville, was sentenced to 364 days in the Camden County Jail as a condition of five years of probation. His wife, Mary Ann Clark-Hendricks, 46, was sentenced to five years of probation. They also must pay $51,560 in restitution, plus a penalty and interest.